The Next Ocasio-Cortezes & Other Takeaways From Tuesday's primaries

There were several winners and losers in Tuesday's primaries in Michigan, Kansas, Missouri and Washington.

The progressive winners :
An Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-like shoe-in for the final election:

Rashida Tlaib (at left), winning Michigan's 13th congressional district Democratic primary in Detroit and some western suburbs. Tlaib is leading Brenda Jones by 33.2 percent to 29.2 percent. This race had later returns than other contests in Michigan, but the win looks assured with 96 percent of precincts reporting.
Tlaib was endorsed by the Justice Democrats and Our Revolution.

Andy Levin appears to be winning the 9th district contest, 52.2 percent to Ellen Lipton's 42.6 percent. Votes are not complete, with 84 percent of precincts reporting as of 4 am.
UPDATE:
Final returns show that Andy Levin won the primary with 52.5 percent.

In Kansas, Brent Welder appears likely to be the Democratic party nominee from the 3rd congressional district. Results were slow coming in. At last report (4 am) he was leading with 36.6 percent to Sharice Davids at second place with 35.1. However, as only 51 percent of the precincts were reporting, the race is fluid and different results could be reported by the end of Wednesday.

As in the Ocasio-Cortez vs. Joe Crowley match-up in New York, cash did not translate into victory; albeit, Welder was not outspent 10 to 1. The last report, July 18, in OpenSecrets.org had Tom Niermann  leading wit $723,192 raised to Welder's $677,990. Davids was third in receipts of $344,704 raised.

In Kansas' 4th congressional district (Topeka and environs) James Thompson (at left) enjoyed a landslide victory over Laura Lombard, 65.3 percent to 34.7 percent.  Welder and Thompson also had the endorsements of Justice Democrats and Our Revolution. Welder enjoyed the endorsement of Demand Universal Healthcare.

Also receiving endorsements by some of the above mentioned progressive organizations, David Benac, Steve Friday, Chris Smith and Fayrouz Saad did not win the 6th, 7th, 8th and 11th district primary contests.

UNFAIR REPORTING ALERT:
Much of the U.S. press is projecting Rashida Tlaib as a candidate who would be the first Muslim congresswoman. However, authors of these stories are not taking into consideration Ilhan Omar, also. The latter is a rising star in Minnesota politics. She has been endorsed by the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, by the Justice Democrats and by Our Revolution to succeed Keith Ellison in the state's 5th congressional district. Minnesota's primary is next week, August 14, however, that state allows early voting. 

Washington state:
Both Justice Democrat candidates were unsuccessful in their quests for designation as the Democratic nominees for congress.

Major Groups Demand Bailout Conditions

From commondreams.org:

Major Groups Demand Bailout Conditions Together
Statement Tells Congress, “Don’t Write President Bush A $700B Blank Check”, Hundreds of Events To Be Held on Thursday Calling For Conditions

TEXT OF LETTER
DEMANDING BAILOUT CONDITIONS

A Call for Common Sense

Every man, woman, and child in America is now being told to ante up $2,000 – an estimated $700 billion in all – to bail out Wall Street’s recklessness, or the very people who created this crisis are telling us that they will bring down our entire economy.

The Treasury Department’s proposal that the Secretary be given essentially unlimited authority to spend $700 billion to bail out any financial institution across the world is irresponsible and unacceptable.

We urge the Congress to insist on some basic conditions for any bailout.

1. Public Oversight. This kind of power can never be centralized in a single individual – much less one who did not even stand for election. Any funds must be controlled by an independent entity, with consumers and workers given seats on its board. Congress should be empowered to name independent monitors and to approve all board members.
2. Protect the Taxpayer. The Treasury bill would have taxpayers buying paper that nobody else wants at prices far above its current value. If a firm wants to auction off its toxic paper to the US Government, taxpayers should get equity in that firm equal to any amount paid in excess of the paper’s value. This will deter profitable firms from using the government as a dumpster for their toxic paper. And it will insure that if the bailout works and the firms become profitable, taxpayers, not simply bankers, benefit from the upside.
3. Curb the casino. This crisis was caused because sensible regulations of the banking system that worked for dozens of years were dismantled or went unenforced. No bailout can go forward without requiring the necessary regulation to insure this does not happen again. Any institution, which receives assistance, should agree to come under a microscope going forward in terms of disclosure requirements, and it should have stringent capital requirement imposed upon it.
4. Invest in the real economy. Ending the bankers strike is not sufficient enough to avoid the recession into which we have been driven. Major public investment in new energy and conservation, rebuilding schools and infrastructure, extending unemployment and food stamps, helping states avoid crippling cuts in police and health services – is vital to get the real economy moving and put people back to work. No bailout should proceed without being linked to support for a major public investment plan to get the economy going.
5. Hold CEOs and Boards of Directors Accountable. Wall Street CEOs shouldn’t be pocketing millions while taxpayers are forced to bail them out. Any firm that applies for relief must agree to cancel all stock option programs and CEOs should have stringent limits placed on their compensation until the Company has repaid all taxpayer assistance.
6. Aid the victims, not just the predators. Both bankers and home owners made foolish bets that home prices would keep rising. Many homeowners, however, were misled by predatory lenders into taking mortgages that they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford. It would be simply obscene to help the predators and not those that they preyed upon. No bail out of the banks should take place without measures to help people in trouble stay in their homes. Explicit provisions should ensure use of the full array of financial and legal tools available to the government to stop foreclosures and restructure home mortgage loans for ordinary Americans, including amending the bankruptcy code to allow judges to modify mortgages. Where workouts are not feasible, people should be allowed to stay in their homes as renters.

Blue Republic of America

What this page is about: Promoting the values and the cause of the Democratic Party of the United States, and in a progressive direction. --And pursuing the question and the quest: how do we convert more voters and more states in the blue (Democratic of course) direction.

As to the word, Republic, our country is a republic, not a democracy. Let's go back to middle school or high school, or in case you learned it later . . . a democracy is a government in which the people directly rule, legislate (pass laws). A republic is a government in which the laws are made by a separate government, and in other definitions, the government is made of elected representatives, representing the will of the people.

Before I lose you, we --Democrats-- stand a risk of losing this election (2008 presidential election) again. For, as in the case of the 2000 election, the Electoral College potentially could play the breaking role in the election. Let's just review, in the 2000 election, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman decisively defeated George W. Bush and Dick Cheney by over 540,000 votes in the popular vote.

Who are the electors of the Electoral College? Article II of the U.S. Constitution established the Electoral College as the body that would elect our President. (It was amended by the 12th Amendment, 1803, to correct problems in the first two Presidential Elections, 1796 and 1800.) The electors, not the national electorate, are the people that elect our president. The electors are individuals that are presented by the political parties in each state to act as representatives of the state in the Electoral College when it meets. The electors are obliged to vote for the political party's nominee for president at the Electoral College's meeting in mid-December.

(Are you still with me? Do you think that we have a democratic republic for our government? Are we selecting our president?)

How do some Electoral College votes result in victories for the losers of the Popular vote? The number of electors is not proportional to the number of people voting or living in each state. I'm getting bored already; how does this affect the elections?

Each state gets its electors by the number of Senators (2 -since each state, no matter its population, gets two Senators) and the number of Representatives that it has. (The Representatives are assigned to each state on the basis of their population.)

SO, here's how the system can give lop-sided victories:

A small state like, Wyoming, our least populous state, with only 515,000 (per infoplease.com), gets two Senators. Meanwhile, California, our most populous state, with a population of 36 million, also gets two Senators.

This means that the weight of one person's vote from a small state, like Wyoming, carries greater strength in the Senate and in the Electoral College than that of a voter from a larger state like California, Texas or New York.

In the 2000 election, Bush and Cheney sewed up the less-populous-state vote with Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, the Dakotas, and so on. Basically, look at election maps, and look west of the 95 degree longitude. Notice how the states to the west (excepting the Pacific Coast states) are solidly Republican.

So, we are at risk, again, of an Electoral College loss to the Republicans.

If this becomes the situation again in 2008, we should show our disdain for this arcane impediment toward a democratic selection of our president. We should have mass protests, as in the "Orange Revolution" of the Ukraine and as in the pro-Lopez Obrador protests in the 2006 Mexican presidential election. We should agitate to reform this method of electing our president. On the other hand, we should not be naive: changing this would require amending the Constitution. And amending the Constitution will require the cooperation of small states.

In the short run then, we must agitate for ensuring the integrity of the vote, especially in marginal, or swing states, such as Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida.